


Trash

by hophophop



Series: Things Said & Unsaid [3]
Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-29
Updated: 2014-11-29
Packaged: 2018-02-27 11:08:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2690621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hophophop/pseuds/hophophop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>"Watson did not intend to share the manuscript."</em><br/>Ms Hudson would be coming later with the crew to close up the house properly, so for now it appeared Joan was the one leaving everything behind.</p><p>set soon after 2x24 & based on information revealed in 2x03 & 3x05.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trash

Ms Hudson would be coming later with the crew to close up the house properly, so for now it appeared Joan was the one leaving everything behind. A tortoise and a couple of boxes for the clothes she’d accumulated (where did all these coats come from?) were pretty much the only addition to the luggage she had that day in August two years ago. He could keep the damn spatula. She aimlessly pushed piles of paper and folders on the desk she used in the study but nothing there was hers, really. Old casework belonged to the partnership he’d seen fit to disband. The books were his, and the equipment, and the knick-knacks. The gadgets and the clutter and the unfinished experiments doomed to suspended animation. She wasn’t going to be one of them.

She checked the all drawers like she did when leaving a hotel, getting some satisfaction from slamming every one shut. _Leave no trace_ was the mantra keeping beat with her pounding head. She seriously considered wiping down the place for fingerprints. When she was gone, no one should ever know she’d been here. She sighed at her own melodramatic thinking and slowly trudged upstairs to the media room. The laptop was on the little table, buried under four inches of paperwork and three large books; she’d forgotten all about it and her stomach dropped at the thought of someone else finding what she’d left there. The battery was long dead and the power cord AWOL, so she took it down to the study and rummaged through the closet for another one. She briefly considered using the sledgehammer she found first, but as angry as she was, she wasn’t one to callously destroy things that didn’t belong to her. Unlike some people.

Once it booted up, she waited for the cranky operating system to shake itself awake and tried to recall what she’d written. It’d been months since she worked on it, but for a while she’d banged away a couple hours a night, almost stream of consciousness, trying to record everything she remembered. She was a little surprised to open the document and see the title page, “The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes”; that initial impulse to try to explain him to someone — anyone — else, had quickly faded. She wasn’t a biographer, and anyway, describing the work was as good a means as any to describe the man. Or so he’d insist. So she’d begun transcribing her field notes and journal entries from the early days and then going through each case and setting down the details, the methods and false trails, her hopes and anxieties about her involvement, and the eventual outcome. The title became her own little joke as well as a reminder not to linger in his shadow. She knew—

Well. At one time, she believed his self-aggrandizing swagger was mostly an ironic masquerade, and underneath, his regard for her and their partnership was the true foundation. Now? Now, she felt pathetic. His dismissive note claimed she no longer needed him, but he never acted if not in self-interest. Most often, that aligned with solving a case. This time it laid bare his unwillingness to be engulfed by the emotional deluge she’d brought down around them. The book was further evidence of her sentimental connection to…all of it, and as such he’d despise what she wrote, and her, for wading in that quagmire.

The thought of rereading it now made her dizzy with dread. She loved what they did. She told him that. And he left. Rejection was painful enough without keeping a detailed account of it all. At least mopping up this mess was simple: file>delete. That’s what Sherlock essentially did, after all, and it was her own plan for moving forward after everything that happened these last few weeks. She didn’t want to remember any of it. Might as well extend that as far back as she could.

She closed her eyes, and a wellspring of uncertainty threatened to upset her conviction. No. It was over, and second-guesses about wishing she’d saved a copy were a problem for another day that might never come. This chapter had to end now, or she’d drown.

_Click._


End file.
